6 comments:

That conversation reminds me of talking with my 15 year old cousin. I found that he responded best to my telling him that the reason that stereotypes seemed true was because we were expecting them to be, so we subconsciously search for evidence to back it up. He still doesn't believe me completely, but he isn't ignoring my points either.

one of the things I appreciate about your blog is precisely your tendency to center on children's experience, since I think this is actually an incredibly useful way of looking at social justice issues (in multiple ways, too: i.e., we think of a world we want our children to inhabit, but part of the way to get there is to try to raise our children up ever more aware [which is one reason, incidentally, I am more or less pro-political correctness], not to mention that when we say things like "women have internalized a sense of being..." or "all whites in the US are to some degree racist because..." we're talking about attitudes that begin *in childhood* which IS part of what makes them so hard to break). plus, what a culture tells or gives or expects of its children tends to act as a pretty good proxy for what it views as "normal" or "acceptable" or "expected."

and on that note, you're right, it is continually astounding. the second shirt especially is pretty awful.